We went to a charity auction recently, where our bid won on a special 2005 Chardonnay (I’ll refrain from saying what Chardonnay, because this should have been a beautiful bottle of wine.)
However, much to our dismay, our prize was awful…a product of what would appear to be poor storage, or something similar. The wine was off. It was cloudy, the color was darker than a Chardonnay should be, just a ting above amber, the aroma was pungent, and slightly reminiscent of dried fruit, but not in a good way.
So, what do you do when this happens to you?
You should always take the wine back to the place that you purchased it. Your local wine shop can send the wine back to their distributor/winery, as they don’t want to sell bad wine either. Of course this is provided you haven’t poorly stored the wine for years allowing the elements to destroy it.
What will destroy a wine?
I walk in to so many homes and see filled wine racks on top of refrigerators. There is nothing worse for wine than heat, light and vibration – essentially the three things that define the top of your refrigerator.
Wine should be stored in cool, dark places away from movement and vibration.
How do you know that a wine is “off?”
9 times out of 10, you can usually tell that there is something just not right about a wine that is off. A typically straw colored wine should not be brown, as this is a sign of oxidation (the destroyer of wine.)
I actually had a wine dealer try to sell me a brown Pinot Blanc, saying that was the beauty of aging….I replied, that is the horror of commission sales people.
A wine that would normally smell like berries and plum shouldn’t smell like vinegar, rotten-eggs or overly musty. Overly musty wine is a result of cork taint – or TCA (Trichloronisole), which will get worse with further exposure to air.
Again, it is important to know how a wine should smell, as some wines actually smell musty on purpose…
Though wine may have sediment accumulated, especially an unfiltered wine. It should not be cloudy, as this may be a sign of bacteria forming in the wine.
Basically the cork should be intact, the aroma should be sweet, the color should be bright and the flavor should be appealing and palatable. If it is not, don’t be afraid to take it back!
